Landscaping--Big Buck Jobs!

My friends in the landscaping business may have a reaction to this:

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times ran a piece of open-borders propaganda masquerading as journalism, which featured a Riverside, Calif., landscaper named Cyndi Smallwood who claims she can't find workers to dig ditches even at $34 an hour.

The claim seems preposterous, but the Times assures us that Smallwood has no ideological ax to grind. She is "ambivalent on immigration reform," the Times reports. Just an ordinary landscaper, you know.

But it turns out there's a tiny bit more to the story that the LA Times isn't telling you. Reader Christopher L. wrote this morning to point out that a simple Google search shows that Cyndi Smallwood is president of the Orange County chapter of the California Landscape Contractors Association, and is a member of the association's "Immigration Task Force." The activist group opposes the "Punitive Immigration Reform Bill Proposed by Rep. Sensenbrenner."

But when you get to the end of the blog, you find that $34./hour is REQUIRED under California law for "living wage" purposes--and that Ms. Smallwood did not actually advertise these jobs (there are 2;) she just tried to fill them by word-of-mouth.

However, after the brouhaha resulting from her LATimes and radio appearances, she had well over 30 applications--we say "well over" because most of the callers on a call-in show ALSO wanted the jobs, but nobody counted them.

...the fact remains that in the judgment of California politicians, $75K/year is a "living wage."